Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, over the course of the last 15 years, has changed the way general audiences view Marvel’s many characters and comic books. I’ve never read any of the comics, but I’d still consider myself a casual fan of some Marvel properties and that’s thanks in large part to the MCU. It features heroes I was already familiar with like Iron Man and Captain America, while also introducing me to ones I didn’t know as well like Black Panther and Ant-Man. One group that I had never even heard of before the MCU was The Guardians of the Galaxy and after just a couple of movies these characters became some of my absolute favorites. So I was excited to see they were going to be starring in their own video game. Unfortunately, the MCU was both a blessing and curse for this Guardians game. On the one hand, it almost certainly wouldn’t exist without the MCU, but on the other, it had a hell of a lot to live up to.
For anyone unfamiliar with this version of The Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s a group of superheroes consisting of Peter Quill (AKA Star-Lord), Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Gamora, and Drax the Destroyer. They travel the galaxy trying to keep the peace, while also looking for just about any way to make money along the way. Each member is an outcast in their own right and they have all come together and formed an almost familial bond with one another after initially being reluctant to team up.
This game kick off with the group arriving in a quarantine zone with the intention of capturing a monster in hopes that they can sell it for some much needed units. They are eventually intercepted by an intergalactic police force known as Nova Corps. After inspecting Peter’s ship, the Milano, Nova Corps officers find illegal goods on board and the Guardians are arrested. Luckily, the commanding officer is a former girlfriend of Peter’s and she allows them to pay a fine and sets them free. The Guardians then set off to find a way to earn the units they need to pay the fine, however, upon returning to pay the fine they find the Nova Corps ship has been almost completely abandoned. The rest of the story revolves around our heroes trying to unravel what has happened and how they can stop the galaxy from being consumed by an all powerful threat.
The story, while not terrible, just felt a bit lacking in intrigue for me. There are big stakes with the entire galaxy being threatened, but the journey wasn’t interesting and the climax was a let down. If being uninteresting wasn’t bad enough, it’s also way too bloated with heaps of unnecessary filler. Some of this bloat comes in the form of gameplay (which I’ll get to later), but there are plenty of story sequences and cutscenes that droned on for way too long. To put it in perspective, I felt like this could have been a solid 8 to 10 hour experience, but it took about twice that amount of time for me to actually finish it.
My favorite thing about The Guardians of the Galaxy is the banter you get between the members. In the MCU films some of these moments are hilarious and go a long way in making these characters as endearing as they are. While the game had a few moments like this that made me chuckle, for every one of those moments, there were a handful of others that fell flat. Part of this issue goes back to the length of the game, as trying to keep this banter fresh over the course of nearly 20 hours leads to reusing the same jokes and it just gets to be a bit much at times. The biggest problem here is that it was obvious the game was trying to channel the tone set by the movies, but the writing very rarely hit the mark.
I will say that while I was disappointed in some of the back and forth between members, the game does a good job of translating the personalities of each member that MCU fans have grown to love. For instance, Drax interprets every piece of dialogue literally, the friendship between Rocket and Groot is shown as strong as ever, and Peter, while sometimes a questionable lead, is the heart and soul of the team. So while the overall narrative left a lot to be desired, The Guardians are still a group of fantastic characters.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, Guardians of the Galaxy, unfortunately, continues to stumble. Right up front, a big issue a lot of people, myself included, might have is that you can only play as Peter. With a group filled with fan favorite characters, this is pretty disappointing. If each member of the team had been playable and had their own combat style and unlockables, the gameplay could have been vastly improved. That said, let’s not focus on my wish list and take a look at what you can actually do as Peter.
The game is broken down into chapters, with each usually beginning on The Milano. Here Peter can talk to the other members or choose to travel to whatever the group’s next objective is. Once the Milano arrives at a new area, Peter and the crew can leave the ship and explore. These areas are all rather linear and will have you solving many environmental puzzles to proceed. Peter can use each other member to do certain things in the environment to solve these puzzles. Rocket can hack terminals and crawl through small spaces, Groot can create root bridges and lift platforms, Gamora can slice things with her sword and anchor to walls to give Peter a boost, and Drax can smash things and move heavy objects. While this sounds like a lot of different options, each of these abilities are essentially solving the same problem of getting through or around an obstructed area. It ends up feeling like doing the same thing over and over, with a slightly different coat of paint.
Outside of this exploration, the biggest chunk of the gameplay will revolve around combat. This is where only being able to play as Peter really rears its ugly head. As Peter, you’ll pretty much only be able to use your blasters. These end up feeling like peashooters, as they do a laughably small amount of damage. This is where the game tries to make up for not allowing you to play as the other Guardians as Peter can command each member to unleash their own special attacks. This might sound cool on paper, but in practice it is not satisfying at all. Doing a couple of button presses to have another character do a flashy move, that you may not even see in the heat of battle, just kind of sucks. This leads to combat feeling boring in most cases and when enemies start getting stronger, that boredom turns to tedium as each Guardian has a pretty substantial cool down between ability uses. So you’ll be back to using Peter and his little peashooter of a gun, which makes late game fights seem like they take an eternity to finish.
There’s also a mechanic called “Huddle Up” that allows Peter to rally the team with a pep talk. If he succeeds in pumping up the team they will get stat boosts and their ability cool downs will be decreased. Like just about everything else in this game, there is a downside, as these Huddle Ups take way too long to perform and kill what little momentum and flow the combat has. If there’s a silver lining here it’s that when the group exits the huddle Peter will fire up a song on his Walkman and there are actually some solid tunes on this game’s soundtrack. If you’re lucky, you’ll get one that you can jam out to while you fight. Some of the most fun I had with combat was rocking out to Flock of Seagulls or Blue Oyster Cult after a successful Huddle Up.
As you complete each battle you’ll earn experience points and for every 1000 points you’ll get a point to spend on new abilities for the team. Each member of the team has three abilities to unlock, as well as a secret ability that unlocks through story progression. These add a little bit extra to combat, but they still don’t come close to making up for the combat’s aforementioned shortcomings. Peter can also collect components as he explores that allows him to upgrade his blasters, shields, and the like, but this whole mechanic felt like an afterthought that they just threw in to have some kind of crafting in the game.
I hate to keep piling on with the negativity because I really do love these characters, but this game had a number of technical issues as well. On Xbox One, the cutscenes were choppy and ran rather poorly. There were times when sound or dialogue just completely cut out and nearly every scene transition was jarring. Luckily the actual gameplay doesn’t have much of this choppiness and runs better, but the load times to get that gameplay were excruciating at times. There were a few spots where the game would throw in random quick time events, but between these rarely showing up and the game not being completely clear on what they wanted me to do during them, I died more than a few times. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but having to wait so long to load back into the game with every death was a real bummer.
The Guardians of the Galaxy game isn’t terrible, but it is quite disappointing. The story isn’t particularly interesting and the gameplay, even at its best, is just passable, but usually straddling the line between boring and tedious. All of that on top of the fact that I feel like this experience is about 10 hours too long and this game ends up being a real slog to get through at times. The one thing that really went a long way in enhancing my enjoyment of the game is that the Guardians themselves are still great characters. While the writing doesn’t always utilize them in the best ways, it is done well enough that they are almost as endearing as their MCU counterparts. All that said, this isn’t the worst game you’ll ever play, but it’s also not really something I think you’ll regret if you decide to skip out on it.
